Random stories

Hench stepped off the train into a sullen Gotham drizzle. His joints hurt. He wanted a cigarette. The doctor had told him to stop smoking, it was hazardous to his health. Seemed like everything was these days. He walked with a pronounced limp, and when he laid in bed beside his wife he had trouble straightening his knee. A kick. Hench had told his wife that he’d fallen down the stairs. He felt unspeakably old that evening.

“Hey, wait up!”

Footsteps slapping on the pavement, then skidding to a stop. The girl pitched forward, and Hench reached out to grab her arm.

“Go home, Harley,” he said, and she twisted out of his grip.

She was a tiny little thing with a bright smile and oddly expansive mannerisms. Reminded him of a theater major that he had dated back in college, must have been twenty years ago by now. They had the same guileless blue eyes, the same pout.

“Why should I?” she said. “Everybody else gets to play.”

Hench spat. He pulled his coat together—the damn zipper had broke on him again—and trudged on beneath the intermittent streetlights, glass crunching underneath his boots. He lived in a bad part of town, though it hadn’t always been that way. Used to be that there were families here, kids drawing on the sidewalk on sweaty summer evenings. Hot dog stands dotted down the street.

They passed a junkie sprawled across two trash bags, eyes lolled into the back of his head. His mouth hung open, lips moving soundlessly. Harley stared at him as they passed. Like she’d never seen anything like that, before.

“Play?” Hench laughed. “Did you see any of us having fun back there?”

Back there was the meeting. Harley had been there, no one knew how she’d learned about it, but that showed a compelling level of initiative. Compelling that is, in a different line of work. After all these years of fighting there were certain unscrupulous characters among them who’d pounce a pretty young thing like her. He’d seen Joker watching, his paintjob running beneath the harsh fluorescent lights as the Mayor’s man ran through the take again. Thanked them for their service antagonizing that freak Bruce Wayne. Donations to the various charitable funds were up again, third quarter in a row. But if that was true, Hench thought, he couldn’t see the benefits from his street.

“Mr. J seems to enjoy it,” Harley said.

Hench guided the girl around the prostrate form of another unconscious man, greasy hair haloed in the puddle he had fallen into. The girl stopped, checked to see if the man was still breathing before they could move on.

“What the hell are you doing here, kid?” Hench asked.

She looked over at him. They were almost to Hench’s apartment. There was the all night diner, old Bettina circulating between the battered tables with her coiffed hair and pot of coffee. There were the signs no one bothered lighting anymore, the outlines of soft towering above them. The black shapes of billboards emerged from the night. A car zipped past, splashing water. Music poured out of its windows, something in a minor key that *thumped.*

“It’ll sound stupid if I just come out and say it,” Harley said.

“Always does,” Hench muttered.

“Excuse me?”

“I said it always does. Let me guess: from the quality of that nice coat you’re wearing you come from someplace comfortable. Not obscene money, not in the city, but a bit outside it. There are hills, and one of your friends uncle’s owns a horse farm, that kind of comfortable. You’re in a gap year between your undergrad and real life, debating graduate school, debating travel, taking auditions off, off Broadway, maybe even getting a bit part here or there. And from someone at those auditions—some sleazy no name I’ve hired to play a role or two—you heard about the meeting and thought maybe you could do some good. Like joining the Peace Corp, except you don’t have to break your lease. You come, sign up with a villain who needs a side kick now and then, some tall, dark, mysterious type you’ll get to regret fondly when you’re older, and on top of that you can feel like you’ve helped saved the children. How am I doing so far?”

Harley stared at him. There was a light on in Hench’s fifth floor apartment, he could see the vague outline of his wife moving through the window. Cooking dinner, probably. He’d told her that he’d be home late. They needed him at the office.

The office. You could almost laugh.

Then Harley did. Laugh. High and a little bit disturbed, a laugh that echoed down the street and made Bettina look up from her coffee.

“Wow, fuck you!” Harley said. “Fuck this job too if it’s gonna turn me into that.”

Hench blinked. He started to respond to respond, but the girl pressed a finger to his lips.

“No. No, that’s enough from you. You want the real answer? Yeah, I heard about the meeting from some slimeball at a show, but the rest of it? I’m not looking to do some dumbass thing like ‘*make a difference*.’ I’m not that naïve. You and I both know that barely one dollar in ten from this whole Batman racket is actually going to charity. The mayor’s wife is on the board of every fund that matters and they’ve remodeled their house at least three times since I moved here, this doesn’t take a genius.”

“Then why?” Hench asked.

“Why?” the girl laughed again, quieter this time. A little bitter. “Because it seemed like fun. Happy now? Because I tried the job market for a year and a half and discovered nine to five wasn’t for me. And because, well…”

“Well?”

“Ah, fuck you! Because maybe Mr. J is kinda cute. But it’s not like that! I can be professional.”

“He can’t,” Hench said.

“Whatever.”

Hench sighed. His wife’s silhouette was gone, dinner was only getting colder. He was bone-deep tired. He’d played four parts in the past week, changing disguises, slotting into this or that intentionally harebrained scheme. And now this. Maybe soon he’d retire, take that job with the force that Gordon had offered. He already knew the gig anyway, and after this long pretending to be a criminal, Hench had picked up more than enough intel about the actual crimes in Gotham City.

“So why follow me?” Hench asked. “Why not Joker? Clearly you’ve got this all planned out.”

She chewed her lower lip. Ran a rough hand through strawberry blond hair. A nearby streetlight flickered on, just for a moment, and Hench realized that she looked nothing like that girl he’d remembered. From college, all those years ago. She was her own woman, perhaps mid twenties, a few years older than he’d guessed. He was getting older, turning into a fool.

“You hire all the first timers, don’t you?” Harley asked.

“Yeah, we do bit parts for main villains. Everything from smash and grabs to the background tough guys for dramatic soliloquy. Paul Hench, purveyor of fine henchmen.”

“I wanted to meet you first,” Harley said, “see what I thought of you. See if you were like those shitbags at the auditions, you know the type. It’s not always easy for the girls.”

“And?” Hench asked. “What’s your verdict?”

She gestured around them. “This is where you live?”

“Yeah.”

“That up there, where you keep looking. That’s your apartment?”

“Yeah.”

“Well then, Mr. H, I’d say you’re alright. Clearly those dollars aren’t disappearing into your pocket.”

She slipped him a card and waved, turning towards the diner. “Call me if you have an opening, yeah? Oh, and Mr. H? I grew up on 137th, nobody bullshits me and I’ve never even seen a horse. Fuck you. Bye-bye!”

She went into the diner, and a moment later Hench saw Bettina laugh, wrinkles lighting up across the waitresses’s seamed face. Hench smiled, life could still surprise you. A certain type of person. He pulled his coat tighter, and hurried in out of the Gotham drizzle. Kissed his wife as he hurried through the door.

“Good day at the office?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Hench said. “Started rough, but in the end it wasn’t all that bad.”

r/TurningtoWords

---

Submitted by turnaround0101 on Sat, Jan 14, 2023 to /r/WritingPrompts/

The prompt

"Because of your work we've managed to get Bruce Wayne to donate billions this year". The Joker and others all sigh. Getting beat up day after day just to keep the charity money coming and keep the psycho Wayne feeling like Gotham needs him. "We do it for the kids commissioner", the clown said.